


Meditation on Dissonance

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Denial, F/F, Failure to appreciate Brezan, Fraternization, Or the courtesan for that matter, Other, Pining, Shuos courtesan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 20:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17588003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: Miuzan serves someone whose merit is unimpeachable. Someone who occupies command effortlessly. It's evident in the way the general stands, unfurling in one smooth motion, the way a bannermoth spreads its wings and prepares to fire.





	Meditation on Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sigalit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigalit/gifts).



> Happy Chocolate Box!
> 
> Thank you to Cathexys for disentangling my contractions and suggesting other entanglements.

**Day 162 (Third Moon Rising East), high calendar year 1261**

Colonel Kel Miuzan believes in maintaining both psychological and physical fitness, so she schedules a courtesan appointment every eighteen days, whether she needs one or not. This courtesan has green hair. It's a mod, a rich bronze green that turns almost blue at the roots of their hair and the base of their eyelashes. Miuzan assumes that soon she will discover whether the mod extends to the rest of the courtesan's body hair. 

Right now, they're sitting on the bed and kissing. These are measured kisses, warm and gentle. It's not the courtesan's fault that Miuzan finds her mind wandering. She's thinking about work, of course. Or not thinking about work: this is a form of meditation like any other, noticing one's attention wandering and redirecting it. Redirecting to the slow movement of a tongue against hers and the give of skin under her glove is not unpleasant. The problem is that, like deep breaths or locations of needles, this kissing isn't fundamentally interesting, either. 

Work, on the other hand, is a puzzle. The general is concerned about something. (Miuzan has known Inesser long enough that, within her own head, she allows the intimacy of the short form, rather than Protector-General.) Inesser hasn't said anything, but it's Miuzan's job to detect concerns before they become official problems. This worry is there, in the way the lines by the general's eyes become more marked sometimes, and the fraction of a breath before she speaks.

The courtesan leans against Miuzan and adjusts their weight, so she has to choose between counter-balancing and falling onto the bed. Since the bed is on the agenda anyway, she goes ahead and falls. She reviews the rest of her plan for the evening, automatically—nutritious dinner, review reports, 7.75 hours of sleep—and undoes the closures on the courtesan's jacket. It's held by magnets, so Miuzan really just has to run her hand down the front with a bit of force.

It's something about agendas, actually, that's worrying the general. Some bit of recurring business. The tension that Miuzan has been noticing, it's palpable at the beginning or end of the day, but disappears when Inesser is working, even if the work is planning evacuations or hunting for Nirai Kujen's spies. 

No, not something about agendas. The calendar itself. 

Miuzan says "Black _Ash_ ," out loud. The courtesan stills under her hands for half a second, then pulls her into a hug. Miuzan lets them. She's thinking. 

The general pauses when remembrances are mentioned. She carries through actual observances without faltering, because the old calendar is part of the trap they are laying, but she regrets that the performance is necessary. It's simple and obvious and Miuzan should have known this all along. Even worse, Brezan will have realized. Miuzan's little brother has never known what focus or strategy means. He flails in twelve separate directions and hopes a blow lands by accident. But he's been flailing about remembrances for years, and though he has no control over his own expressions, he certainly knows how to read other people. He'll realize that the general is disturbed, and that Miuzan hasn't planned a response.

Or hadn't. She will now. Miuzan pushes up on one elbow and allows herself an open-mouthed smile. She's tasting air over her palate like a cat, hunting. Miuzan has been looking forward to destroying Nirai Kujen since before Isteia. But the contest is personal, now: he has made the general sad.

* * *

  
**Day 35 (Needles Edged in Frost), high calendar (revised) 1262**

The general's right that, under the new calendar, hawkfucking policies have to be different. The Kel lose enough people to enemy action; they don't need to prosecute every last idiot who ends up in a Shuos brothel in the dark without their gloves on. But that doesn't mean Miuzan wants to think about the details of implementing a new policy.

As a way of stalling, Miuzan assigned the draft report on cross-cultural comparison of laws on military fraternization to her least favorite captain. The result is every bit as maddening as she should have expected. Miuzan has saved a bar of very dark chocolate from the last festival; she is only managing to work her way through the document by permitting herself one square at the end of every other page.

The whole report is full of weird, passive "one might be drawn to consider" sorts of sentences. The man can't even say "This is disgusting" without talking around it for three paragraphs. He's always writing things like, "In a counterintuitive and yet provocative construction, it has been suggested by heretical adherents to the Gwa Reality framework that intense emotional orientation toward military superiors has arisen in an inevitable human response to such an inherent power differential." Miuzan notes "This is ridiculous!" in bold red strokes in the left margin. Even under the old high calendar version of formation instinct, Kel retained _judgment._ There's a difference between natural affection for one's officers and admiration for particular talent.

The following paragraph is painful on multiple levels:

> The attestation of patrons to their protegés' talents, as realized both in formal letters of recommendation and in informal efforts to connect protegés to specific opportunities, underlies Gwa Reality expectations for advancement in both military and civilian life. In this context, cross-rank fraternization is criticized not as an intrinsic wrong, or a "poetic dissonance" in the Gwa-an phraseology, but rather as an impediment to measurement of the veracity of a patron's testimony. It is expected that lovers will speak highly of each other by default and without reference to absolute measures of each other's achievements. Some analysts have noted that the Gwa Reality tradition of deprecating casual or informal sexual contact limits their construction or implementation of policy on the effect of more fleeting liaisons...

This is a very long-winded way of saying that the Gwa-an military is hopelessly corrupt, whether they're fucking each other or not. The Kel promote based on actual merit as measured by absolute standards, not "attestation of patrons." Miuzan allows the bitter chocolate to dissolve on her tongue and reflects on how much better it is to work for someone whose merit is unimpeachable. Someone who occupies command effortlessly. It's evident in the way the general stands, unfurling in one smooth motion, the way a bannermoth spreads its wings and prepares to fire.

A sort of sharpness lingers in Miuzan's mouth, even after the chocolate is gone.

* * *

  
**Day 47 (Sky Turning Gold), high calendar (revised) 1262**

Miuzan and the general are in Inesser's office, sharing a thirty-year-old bottle of pear brandy. The brandy tastes more like burning than anything specific. Its virtue is all in its scent, a pear so ripe it bruises when your fingers brush it. The two women have been quiet for a little while, basking in the satisfaction of a long day's work, when all at once the general asks, "Have you ever thought of getting married?"

Miuzan straightens. "One Andan assassin in the family is enough. Sir." Miuzan isn't aware of any specific potential alliance on the horizon, but the general doesn't ask this sort of question without a reason, even in an ostensibly casual situation like this one.

The truth is, every six years Miuzan reviews her twelve-year plan, and each time "consider marriage" gets pushed back to around Year Nine. There are theoretical benefits to matrimony—a partner to help organize one's personal affairs, a legacy—but her personal affairs are rather theoretical at this stage, and Keryezan's children can carry on the family name. Or Ganazan's can. Ganazan has been making noises about babies, lately, and she's certainly doing well enough for herself to finance a bit of child care. Which just goes to show that partners are unnecessary for reproduction, even if that's a primary goal.

Quiet settles again. The general is watching Miuzan, her lips pressed together in a small, thoughtful smile. Her lashes are thick and dark. The effect is not one of softness, but of depth, the current of gravity in an unending black sky.

Maybe the brandy is stronger than Miuzan had realized, because she feels warmth gathering in the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet. She's not sure what good a marriage would be for her, or what good she would be in a marriage. The center of her life is moments like this one.

The phrase "intense emotional orientation toward military superiors" floats through Miuzan's mind, the way a song might, if a song lyric wanted to take her universe and twist it sideways. She doesn't react openly. She's not her little brother. And anyway, she doesn't need to stare at the general to know how she waits, one hand lightly brushing the arm of her chair. 

Miuzan does inhale the brandy fumes, imagining pear juice running down her gloves, and roll a sip around her mouth. Then she says, "Actually. I've been thinking I should seek an independent command."

Inesser nods. "I'll miss these meetings. But there is that matter by the High Glass Border..."

They clasp hands, glove to glove.

* * *

  
**Day 83 (Feast of Spirals Whirling), high calendar (revised) 1262**

Brigadier General Kel Miuzan places a cushion on the desk chair in her personal suite, on her new command moth, _As Gentle As Gravity_. It's embroidered with her new emblem, a leaping stag. The antlers are a soft red-brown, like fallen leaves.

The cushion was delivered with a note from the general, in soft blue ink: "My old friend. You know I use every tool at my disposal."

Miuzan will see her again, when this campaign is over.


End file.
